


opening day

by nationalleaguer



Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M, Pittsburgh Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 10:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10694979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nationalleaguer/pseuds/nationalleaguer
Summary: So this, today, on a clear April day in Boston – it’s nice. Almost sweet, if he doesn’t think too much about it.





	opening day

**Author's Note:**

> Good young pitching will break your heart, but it's hard not to be romantic on Opening Day, y'know?

Tyler hunches down even further than he has to as he ducks into the door in the Green Monster. He looks too big everywhere, but it’s especially pronounced in tight spaces, the kind where he’s prone to whacking an elbow on a wall he thought was further away. 

“This is awesome,” he says, stumbling over his feet midsentence and almost falling onto Jameson. He’s grown into his body a little, but it’s all relative. Jameson remembers him two, three years ago: eighty-five percent legs, like a baby giraffe with a high-90s fastball.

But here they are now, Opening Day at Fenway Park. Must have grown up at least a little bit if they’re letting you play here; no mistaking this place for Altoona. The sky’s bright, and everything really is green – not just the wall in left, but all the trim around the ballpark, each pole and pillar a slightly muted reflection of the outfield grass. Jameson was taking a slow lap around the yard, absorbing the cathedral-quiet of an empty park in the morning, when Tyler bumped into his shoulder and asked if he was going out to see the Monster. 

Inside the wall, they joke about Manny Ramirez and sign their names in one of the few corners that isn’t scribbled over yet. Jameson carves his name neatly, with the date. Tyler takes the pen out of his hand and leans over him, reaching way up to mark his initials where the wall meets the ceiling.

“We get it,” Jameson says. “You’re tall.” 

“You should try being taller,” Tyler says, still leaning across him. Happy with his signature, he straightens up, steadying himself with a hand on Jameson’s shoulder. “You know what else I wanted to do?” he says, and then that’s it, they’re kissing, inside the Green Monster.

This has only ever happened when they’ve both been drunk, and Jameson’s surprised to find it’s kind of nice when neither of them tastes like cheap beer. It’s this months-long game of chicken they’ve been playing, both of them daring the other to be the one who asks what the hell’s going on first. Jameson doesn’t remember who started it. He remembers the fluorescent light in his kitchen in Indianapolis last year, Tyler the last one left at the end of some long night and the two of them making out up against the counter. 

Usually, though, it’s some couch far too small for a couple of guys over six-foot-five. It never goes too far, and they joke about it carefully in the moments afterward, making sure nobody’s going to get the wrong idea. 

So this, today, on a clear April day in Boston – it’s nice. Almost sweet, if he doesn’t think too much about it. He slides his hand through Tyler’s hair, and Tyler grazes his teeth across Jameson’s lower lip, hand still settled loosely on his shoulder.

Thank goodness for the fact that Gerrit Cole runs like a bull in a china shop and enters rooms like Kramer bursting into Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment. Jameson hears him coming, out on the field, and steps back from Tyler (although Tyler gets his mouth on Jameson’s ear for a second before they split, and he’s going to be thinking about that for longer than he’ll ever admit). 

“G,” he says as Cole manages to get the door open. “We’re running out of room in here.”

“Thanks for the invite, guys,” Cole says, settling his hat back on his head. 

“You were getting in the zone,” Jameson says. “I didn’t want to fuck with you.”

A few pictures survive on Jameson’s phone: two of them at a time peering out the holes in the wall where they put up the balls and strikes; a group selfie where he looks stoned, Cole is smiling that slightly-crazed smile of his, and Tyler’s leaning over Jameson’s shoulder, boy-band handsome and tan already from a winter in Southern California. 

They make their way back across the expanse of the outfield grass. Cole walks ahead, starting to get fired up as his Opening Day start draws nearer. Tyler catches up with him, talking his ear off. Jameson falls behind, thinking not for the first time that he could never be an outfielder, standing out here for long minutes at a time waiting for something to happen to you. 

He ended up with a ball in his back pocket, and he takes it out now, settles into a two-seam grip as he walks. Wednesday, he pitches. Later, he’ll decide if it means anything, kissing Tyler dead sober for who knows how long, and kind of liking it. None of it feels all that pressing now; the season’s clean ahead of them, not a scratch on it. He pushes up the long sleeves of his undershirt and lets the spring sunshine hit his arms.


End file.
